Determinants of Retail Selection Decision: A Comparative Study of Rural and Urban Consumers

India is a land of Villages. Villagers constitute major part of market base which is seldom realized by urban retailers. Over the past few years rural India has witnessed an increase in the buying power of consumers, accompanied by their desire to upgrade their standard of living. Major retailers who have already established themselves in the Indian market have now realized that the urban market is already has been saturated &amp; rural market is largely unexploited. Host of projects, such as NREGA, ITC's e-chaupal, HLL's project Shakti, retail hubs like Kisan Sansar (Tata), Haryali Kisan Bazar (DMC), both from the government and the private companies, have changed the rules of the marketing game in rural India. Despite the irregular buying capacity of rural markets, the taboos and traditions it is steeped in, the rural market in India is a highly lucrative one. The paper discusses the profile of the rural Indian customer and analyses the characteristics of the diverse and scattered rural market comparatively with urban Indian customers. The paper goes on to explore what factors do the rural &amp; urban consumer considers before choosing a particular product.


INTRODUCTION
Villages are integral part of any nation. They become even more prominent in Asian & African countries where majority of population lives in villages. The major portion of Indian population resides in rural India. According to the Indian recent census report, there are 638,365 villages in India and about 74% of Indian population lives in these villages. The main occupation of the Indian rural population is agriculture and related occupations. The scenario is changing, as the economic development in the urban area is much faster due to industrialization such as IT, automobile, and the like. One-sixth of the world's population live in India. Therefore, India is an attractive market (Ling and Dawn, 2004). The economy witnesses increased potential for consumption, increased competition, and availability of products both in terms of quality and quantity, and increased level of awareness among consumers. A large urban middle class and upper class, which constitutes one-third of the population, is a huge market for branded goods. The market for branded goods is increasing at 8 per cent per annum and in certain consumer goods; it is increasing at even 12 per cent.
The Indian economy is the third largest in Asia. It is expected to grow at 7 per cent. Besides this, the Indian companies are entering into strategic alliances with the foreign reputed brands (Kinra, 2006). It has been known that elderly population in 2010 has only been 9 per cent of the population as against 19 per cent of US and 30 percent of Japan. This implies that the Indian consumers are comparatively younger as compared to the consumers of other nations including developed ones (Ling and Dawn, 2004).
People who are at the bottom of the pyramid too have aspirations to consume goods and services, which are enjoyed by the high-end consumers. It makes difference in the buying behavior of the consumers. A product being treated as a gift item in an urban area may be perceived as a necessity item in the rural area. It may happen that the urban consumer buys any item out of impulse and for rural consumer it may be a planned activity to buy the same.
The urban consumer may not depend upon the dealer for obtaining useful information about the product, but a rural consumer may heavily depend upon the dealer for getting assurance about the product. Urban consumer may look for exclusiveness of designs in the products and on the contrary rural consumer may be more concerned about the core functionality of the product, which he/she intends to buy.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Rural marketing is all about planning & implementation of marketing function for the rural areas. The key for succeeding in rural markets lies in comprehending the psychology of rural consumers & their needs. So Rural marketing can be defined as " the process of delivering In order to investigate the buying patterns, the analysts have employed both social class and social status as variables. But it is probably true to say that the social class represents the status characteristics rather than class positions. Graham (1956) found that the acceptance of products differ according to the social class but not in a simple manner.
Various studies have revealed that the people of different social strata tend to differ in terms of their psychological and behavioral patterns (Williams, 2002). Television was accepted to the large extent by lower class members than by upper class members. Graham used occupation as the main indicator of the social class, though it was criticized later. But his hypothesis was substantiated that different classes will accept a given innovation to varying degrees. Some studies suggest that the people of higher social class positions are likely to be more innovative in their buying patterns. In spite of lack of any substantiation, the idea was widely accepted that new products are first accepted by higher classes and later transmitted to lower classes. Other sociological concepts of reference group and role behaviour are widely employed in consumer behaviour. Consumer behaviour occupies a midway position between social sciences (sociology, psychology, economics and anthropology) and the applied field of marketing. Consumer behaviour is used to refer the study of individual consumers and group of consumers such as families and the area of study covered is concerned with factors that cause the spending units to behave as they do. People with higher status occupations have characteristic personalities, motives and values.

NEED FOR THE STUDY
India is a land of Villages. Villagers constitute major part of market base which is seldom realized by urban retailers. Over the past few years rural India has witnessed an increase in the buying power of consumers, accompanied by their desire to upgrade their standard of living. Major retailers who have already established themselves in the Indian market have now realized that the urban market is already has been saturated & rural market is largely unexploited. Host of projects, such as NREGA, ITC's e-chaupal, HLL's project Shakti, retail hubs like Kisan Sansar (Tata), Haryali Kisan Bazar (DMC), both from the government and the private companies, have changed the rules of the marketing game in rural India. Despite the irregular buying capacity of rural markets, the taboos and traditions it is steeped in, the rural market in India is a highly lucrative one. The study has been carried out to explore the factors which influences rural & urban consumer before choosing a retail store.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
• To understand the buying behavior of the Urban & Rural consumers  urban consumer gives more importance as he/she feels it as part of relaxation. Urban customer thinks entertainment is of prime importance while shopping at a retail store as he wants to relax amidst his busy schedule whereas rural customer rarely pays any attention to entertainment factor as his focus is just for shopping.

IJRFM FINDINGS & INTERPRETATIONS
Although the rural market offers a vast untapped potential, it is found that it's not easy to operate in these markets. With the increasing social and cultural diversity, the growing wealth of products and services, consumers have increasingly wide range of shopping options.
Hence some of the strategies should be designed by the retailer in order to tap both rural as well as urban consumers. Forming marketing partnerships with NGO's & agencies that have better understanding of lives & problems in rural areas would materialize in to better sales.
For rural consumers it's always by word of mouth that increases the buying behavior. So retailers should develop sound promotional strategy such that the information related to the product should be made easily available to the consumers. Most of the rural consumers are unaware of the brands due to ignorance or literacy factor. So it's the retailer who has to educate the rural consumers regarding the usage of branded products.

CONCLUSION
In short the most ideal route to reach the rural as well as urban customer by the retailer is to